Philippines: Living in Paradise

This is from the Daily Tribune. This editorial seems to be cheerleading for Joseph Estrada the deposed and now pardoned former premier. The Catholic Bishops have actually in the past often opposed the Arroyo administration. Perhaps they are changing now and have made peace with the administration. The Papacy has always been after the Philippine Catholic Church to tone down its political advocacy. If the Church trends too far right it may find that it loses priests to the more radical opposition as has happened in the past.

Living in paradise?
EDITORIAL

01/30/2008
Catholic bishops appear to have totally lost their moral moorings as they virtually exculpated Gloria Arroyo and her government from blame on the rampant corruption and instead put the blame on the Filipino people for the moral decay in society.
They also placed the blame on the media for the “darkness” that we live with today, saying Filipinos are “a people almost without hope,” seeing darkness everywhere, adding the many problems we have today are “simply rumors, fears, suspicions, imagined wrongs” and as these rumors, imagined wrongs, suspicions and fears are reported in the newspapers, the people believe these imaginary problems to be true and factual. All these were stated in the bishops’ pastoral statement issued Monday.
This is truly an amazing pastoral statement from the bishops who claim to be the country’s moral guides.
Simply rumors, suspicions and imagined wrongs in this government and society, they say? Were the “Hello Garci” conversations caught on tape detailing the cheating operations of the presidential polls of 2004 which even included abductions of election officers who were not willing to engage in cheating, an imagined problem and a rumor?
Is the grossly overpriced ZTE-National Broadband Network project an imagined wrong, despite the testimonies of witnesses and documents presented as evidence?
Is the P3-billion fertilizer funds scam simply based on rumors and suspicions? And who planned this diversion of funds, going into the campaign kitty of Gloria in 2004? The Filipino people? Who benefited from this scam? Certainly not the Filipino people. So why should the blame of corruption be placed on the people? Because we have become apathetic and see these as perks of the powerful and influential? But aren’t the bishops leading the way in apathy and passiveness in addressing clearly moral issues by telling the flock to support the immoral?
They have so stated that impeachment is meaningless in the search for the truth. They are found to have accepted monetary and project bribes from Gloria and her Malacañang, not to mention their accepting without any qualms, donations stemming from jueteng, drugs, prostitution money, while calling the same “donations” as plunder when it comes to one whom they plotted to oust from his legitimate presidency.
Now they say it is not within their power to call for the resignation of the corrupt in government. They do not denounce the violence inflicted by Gloria’s police and military on the people who march in the streets for redress of grievances. Now they say they see the good in the Arroyo government and that it is we, the people, who must be first to change ourselves, and insinuate that we must unite behind the Gloria government, to rid ourselves of the “imaginary” problems besetting the nation, as these problems are merely rumors and suspicions.
The bishops were practically short of saying Filipinos today don’t realize that they live in Adam and Eve’s paradise and that they must shed off the darkness they imagine they live in for Paradise’s fall not to occur.
But obviously, the amoral bishops, by passing on the blame of moral decay and corruption on the people were “laying the predicate,” so to speak, to justify their pastoral stand on “critical collaboration” with the Gloria government that they clearly insinuated was not “all bad.”
As the bishops put it in their pastoral statement: “despite the prevailing darkness, we see everything is not thoroughly evil. There is good everywhere, even in those we often criticize, and it is our task to critically collaborate with them even as we critically oppose the not too good.”
This position is no different from the early position taken by the bishops during the Marcos years, where they chose a stand of critical collaboration with the Marcos government, after their priests, one of whom was Jesuit priest Integan who was into armed struggle with now National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, along with others engaged in guerrilla warfare against Marcos, were raided and arrested and where deals were made between Marcos and the church.
Certain bishops and priests were also earlier charged with rebellion for the Nov. 29 Manila Peninsula incident, but were released. Now it is critical collaboration again.
Yet the same bishops now say we should see the “glimmers of light shrining through” instead of focusing only on the “dark side of our national situation,” by changing ourselves.
They may as well have stated that they support Gloria Arroyo and her government, and have the people embrace the evils in government.
Bishops have become irrelevant. They cannot claim to be moral guardians guides when they are themselves being deliberately amoral.